Kuppel is made of three recordings made in Karlsruhe (Germany) during a two months stay in the Fall 2005. Some of these recordings were made outside — the tramways of the city which have a very specific sonority, very calm in fact, and the church chime of the Markplatz — and inside — the sound of a squeaking door adjacent to the studio where I was working at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM). The work has been composed specially for the dome of loudspeakers installed in the ZKM_Kubus. I had this architecture in mind while I started to work with the sound material. This work is a glimpse to the inhabitants of Karlsruhe as well as to the people who welcomed me during my stay. But I didn’t want to tell them the whole truth at the beginning of the work. Thus the sonorities and the timbres unveil progressively and really make sense at the end of the work. Kuppel is part of the Immersive Music cycle which includes StrinGDberg (2001, 02, 03), Éden (2003), and Palindrome (2005-06, 07).

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Kuppel [Dome] was realized in 2005-06 in the studios of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM, Germany) and at the composer’s studio in Montréal (Québec). The work has been commissioned by the ZKM where it premiered on December 9, 2006. The piece was presented on the Klangdom of the ZKM (26 tracks, 43 speakers). Thanks to Ludger Brümmer. The present version was made in the summer of 2014.

Premiere

• December 9, 2006, trans_canada_release: Robert Normandeau, ZKM_Kubus, Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg, Germany)